Bristol City Council's household battery recycling pilot began on September 16 2002. Since then, 70,000 batteries (one tonne) have been collected and enquiries have been received from companies as far away as Japan and Australia.
First
Not only is the scheme the first in the UK to recycle household batteries, but Avonmouth-based Britannia Zinc, which carries out the recycling, has pioneered a process by which unsorted batteries can be treated together. This technique is not practiced anywhere else in Europe.
A spokeswoman for the scheme told letsrecycle.com: “The scheme has sparked quite a lot of interest from other councils, businesses and organisations such as the police, hospitals and prisons. Enquiries about the technicalities of the recycling process have come from as far afield as France, Japan and Australia.”
Collections
The collections cover all 160,000 households with BS1-BS16 postcodes in the central Bristol area. Residents have received bags to store their batteries until they have enough to put in their recycling black boxes along with other materials. Alternatively, high rise residents can use two drop sites.
The pilot will run for a year until September 2003. The spokeswoman said: “Hopefully if it goes well, the scheme will be expanded. That's been the intention all along.”
Councillor Jenny Smith said: “Our battery collection has been highly successful and we have been inundated with offers of more batteries.”
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